Saturday, February 02, 2013

Happy Randsday!

In other words,
today is Ayn Rand's birthday.

I second Harry Binswanger's sentiment and will be spending the first
half of my day accordingly.

To celebrate Randsday, you do something not done on any other
holiday: you give yourself a
present. Randsday is for getting that longed-for luxury you ordinarily would
not buy for yourself. Or for doing that long-postponed, self-pampering activity
you cannot seem to fit into your chore-packed schedule.

Randsday is
for reminding ourselves that pleasure is an actual need, a psychological
requirement for a human consciousness. For man, motivation, energy, enthusiasm
are not givens. Psychological depression is not only possible but rampant in
our duty-preaching, self-denigrating culture. The alternative is not
short-range, superficial "fun,"
but real, self-rewarding pleasure. On Randsday, if you do something that you
ordinarily would think of as
"fun," you do it on a different
premise and with a deeper meaning: that you need pleasure, you are entitled to
it, and that the purpose and justification of your existence is: getting what
you want--what you really
want, with full consciousness and dedication.

"Otherwise, Mr. Obama is a mere piker when it comes
to issuing decrees; he's been easily out-distanced by the likes of those
Republicans - e.g., Eisenhower and Reagan - who
today's conservatives claim to be paragons of constitutionally-limited
government." -- Richard Salsman, in "When it Comes to Abuse of
Presidential Power, Obama is a Mere Piker" at Forbes

"Luck had nothing to do with it, other than serving as a general term for
coincidence and happenstance combined with the creativity and effort required
to bring that idea into reality." -- Michael Hurd, in "What Lurks Beneath
the Sanctimonius Disdain for Money" at The Delaware Wave

"People who have genuine self-esteem don't squander their time with people
they don't respect." -- Michael Hurd, in "What's a Snob?" at The Delaware Coast
Press

"[T]he thought that I had only two [rounds] remaining in
the event the second attacker didn't flee or had backup didn't sit
well with me, especially given the fairly common incidents of crime involving
multiple assailants." -- Paul Hsieh, quoting Ryan
Moore, in "'Carrying a Gun Saved My Life': Meet Ryan Moore"
at PJ Media

My Two Cents

Richard Salsman's remarks
on executive orders are a must-read. Here's another excerpt.

Historically, legal counselors to U.S. presidents have justified
executive orders on these brief and somewhat ambiguous Constitutional passages.
But additionally, in Mississippi v.
Johnson (1866), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a U.S. president
legitimately performs two basic functions - ministerial and discretionary
- and that executive orders can legitimately facilitate each. Not until
1952 were specific rules and guidelines given for what a president could or
could not via executive orders. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) the
Supreme Court invalidated Truman's decree on steel mills, on the grounds
that he was attempting to make law (a legislative function), not merely
carrying out (or "executing") existing law. Presidents since that
decision have tried to cite the specific laws they are acting under, when
issuing new executive orders.

A Massachusetts school recently threatened with suspension
a five-year-old boy for the horrific acts of building a toy gun out of
Legos and -- imagine this! -- pointing it at other kids and making shooting
noises.